This is a developing story. All figures current as of 3 March 2026.
On Saturday 1 March 2026, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran under an operation named "Operation Epic Fury." Iran retaliated with attacks on military and infrastructure targets across the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Iraq. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in a targeted strike. By Monday morning, global energy markets were repricing everything.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, surged as much as 13 percent to $82.37 a barrel on Monday, its highest point since January 2025, before settling back to around $79. West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, climbed more than 12 percent to $75.33 at its peak. Oil prices had already risen 17 percent since the start of 2026 on the back of escalating US-Iran tensions and tightened sanctions. The weekend's strikes pushed a market already under pressure into a full risk-price reaction.
The reason is not complicated. Everything turns on a strip of water 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest point.
The Strait of Hormuz: The World's Most Critical Oil Chokepoint
Roughly 20 percent of the world's daily oil consumption, between 15 and 20 million barrels, moves through the Strait of Hormuz every day. The narrow passage between Iran to the north and Oman and the UAE to the south is the only sea route connecting the Persian Gulf to the open ocean. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar and Iran all export through it. There is no adequate overland alternative. Saudi Arabia has contingency pipelines that can move approximately 5 million barrels per day by alternative routes, but around 10 million barrels remain effectively landlocked without the Strait.
As of Monday, tanker traffic through the Strait had essentially stopped. Over 200 vessels, including crude oil and LNG tankers, anchored outside the waterway. Three tankers were struck by projectiles over the weekend, and one seafarer was killed. Shipping companies and their insurers are not willing to risk passage while missiles continue to fly overhead. Iran has warned vessels not to attempt transit.
Jorge Leon, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy, said the most immediate impact on oil markets was the effective halt of Strait traffic, preventing 15 million barrels per day from reaching global markets. Energy Aspects analyst Amrita Sen told CNBC that she expected Brent crude to hold around $80 for the near term, and that while the US and Israel hold military superiority to prevent a total closure of the Strait, individual attacks on ships are significantly harder to stop.
Qatar has halted production of liquefied natural gas and declared force majeure on LNG shipments. Saudi Arabia shut its largest domestic oil refinery after a drone strike on Monday. European natural gas prices surged more than 40 percent on Monday as a result of the LNG disruption. The Dutch TTF benchmark, Europe's reference price, jumped to over 45 euros per megawatt hour.
OPEC+ announced a production increase of 206,000 barrels per day from April in a meeting that had been planned before the conflict began. Analysts were unanimous that the increase was insufficient to offset the disruption to Strait traffic and would do little to contain prices.
What This Means at the UK Pump
UK petrol prices averaged 132.9p per litre at the AA's most recent measure, down from 135.7p at the start of 2026. That short-term relief is about to reverse.
Simon Williams, RAC head of policy, told Auto Express: "If oil were to climb to and stay at the $80 a barrel mark, then drivers could expect to pay an average of 136 pence for petrol." At $90 a barrel, Williams put the likely figure at over 140p. At $100, it rises toward 150p. Brent has already hit $82.
Howard Cox of FairFuelUK put it more bluntly, telling The Times that with the conflict disrupting oil tanker routes and increasing shipping insurance costs, Brent could initially push toward $80 to $90 in the short term, with the risk of triple-digit prices in extended conflict scenarios. A sustained rise to $100 would add between 10p and 20p per litre to both petrol and diesel within weeks based on historical patterns, comparable to the price surge seen during Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 when oil reached $119 a barrel and UK pump prices broke records.
Yorkshire-based motoring costs analyst Andrew King told The Times that within the next 10 to 12 days the UK could be seeing record pump prices. He also noted that timing compounds the problem. Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced at November's Budget that the 5p fuel duty cut implemented during the 2022 energy crisis would be reversed in stages: 1p added in September 2026, 2p in December, and the final 2p in March 2027. Those planned increases were already priced into future forecasts. They now arrive on top of a supply shock.
Andrew Watson of PetrolPrices.com said wholesale fuel costs had already risen sharply and that motorists should expect gradual price rises across both petrol and diesel in the coming days. Paul Barker, editor of Auto Express, described the likely short-term impact on oil prices as negative and said the longer-term effects depended entirely on how the conflict evolved.
A UK pump price of £2.00 per litre would require Brent crude sustained well above $120 a barrel, a scenario no analyst is currently forecasting as a base case but which FairFuelUK and others have identified as a tail risk in a prolonged conflict that destroys oil infrastructure rather than merely disrupting shipping. The UK government's official position, delivered by the Prime Minister's spokesman on Monday, is that the government is monitoring the situation closely and that Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has spoken directly to IEA executive director Fatih Birol. The spokesman added that there are currently no reported impacts on UK fuel supply.
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What This Means at the US Pump
American drivers were paying a national average of $2.98 per gallon as of Sunday, the lowest level since 2021, after prices fell below $3 for the first time in four years in December 2025. The Trump administration had been actively celebrating falling gas prices as a policy win. That narrative is now under significant pressure.
GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan predicted on Monday that some stations could be charging as much as 30 cents more per gallon by the end of the week. US gasoline futures surged 9.1 percent to $2.496 per gallon on Monday, their highest point since July 2024. That figure represents the spot market price sellers pay, not the retail pump price, but it directly drives what consumers will see within days.
Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University, said the full crude processing cycle typically takes six weeks, meaning the complete impact of the supply disruption would be somewhat delayed. Ken Medlock of Rice University's Baker Institute put the rule of thumb at 25 cents per gallon for every $10 increase in the per-barrel oil price. Brent was up approximately $7 to $9 from pre-attack levels by Monday afternoon. The arithmetic is uncomfortable for a White House that ran on energy cost promises.
The Trump administration has cited incoming Venezuelan oil as a partial offset. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CBS News on Monday that tankers filled with Venezuelan crude are now arriving in the US following January's capture of former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, and that March refinery runs would see significant Venezuelan volumes. Economists acknowledged this would provide some cushion but described it as insufficient to prevent a pump price increase if Brent remains elevated.
The broader inflationary concern is significant. Nigel Green of investment advisory firm De Vere Group noted that higher oil prices do not stay in fuel costs. Higher freight charges, higher airline fuel bills, and higher distribution costs eventually compress corporate margins or drive consumer price increases, or both. With US inflation already running close to the Federal Reserve's target, a sustained oil spike would complicate the rate-cutting outlook that financial markets have been pricing in for the second half of 2026.
The Scenarios Ahead
The range of outcomes is wide and depends almost entirely on what happens in the next two to three weeks.
The least damaging scenario is a rapid de-escalation that allows tanker traffic through the Strait to resume. Rystad Energy's Leon said that even after de-escalation signals, it could take several weeks for shipping to normalise as traffic clears and operators remain cautious. The price premium from disruption would fade, though not immediately.
The middle scenario is a conflict of several months that disrupts Strait traffic on an ongoing basis through insurance costs and shipping caution even without physical blockade, keeping Brent in the $80 to $90 range. Goldman Sachs estimated during Iran's 12-day conflict with Israel in 2025 that prices could pass $100 in an extended Strait disruption. That scenario is now closer than it was on Friday.
The worst-case scenario, which analysts describe as low probability but not negligible, involves sustained attacks on Gulf oil infrastructure of the kind that would require specialised replacement equipment unavailable at short notice. Bob McNally of Rapidan Energy Group told CNN that the Abqaiq oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia, attacked in 2019, contained equipment that could not simply be reordered. A repeat attack of that scale in the current conflict environment would be a fundamentally different supply shock to a temporary shipping halt.
Goldman Sachs' estimate of oil above $100 per barrel in an extended Strait disruption would translate, based on current RAC modelling, to UK pump prices above 150p per litre. The IEA noted that the market is currently well supplied overall, with additional output from the US, Guyana and OPEC+ expected to outpace demand in 2026. That assessment was made before the conflict began. Whether it remains accurate depends on how many of those supply sources remain unaffected.
Drivers on both sides of the Atlantic who were already managing squeezed household budgets are being handed a new variable they did not budget for. The conflict began on Saturday. The fuel bill arrives this week.
Sources: NBC News, NPR, CNN, CBS News, CNBC, Al Jazeera, RTÉ, Auto Express, LBC, Yorkshire Live/FairFuelUK. All oil price figures from FactSet and CME Group data via CBS News and CNBC. UK pump price figures from RAC and AA. All analysis and editorial commentary is original.